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President George H.W. Bush signed the Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA) into law on July 26, 1990. In his speech that day, he said: “Every man, woman, and child with a disability can now pass through once-closed doors into a bright new era of equality, independence, and freedom.”
That was very nice of the President to say, but it was naive. To be more honest and truthful, he should have said: “Every man, woman, and child with a disability might, if all goes well, pass through some once-closed doors into a bright new era of equality, independence, and freedom in about three decades or so.”
“We’ve come a long way since the ink dried on the ADA more than thirty years ago. But we still have a long way to go to make this country truly accessible, including making sure that every American can use our nation’s public transportation systems.”
Last month, a bill called the All Stations Accessibility Program (ASAP) Act of 2021 was introduced in the U.S. Senate by Senators Tammy Duckworth, Democrat of Illinois; Bob Casey, Democrat of Pennsylvania; and Sherrod Brown, Democrat of Ohio. It would provide grants of at least $1 billion annually over the next ten federal fiscal years to be used only for renovating public transportation train stations to make them accessible under the ADA.
A companion bill was introduced in the House of Representatives by Representatives Jesús Garcia and Marie Newman, both Democrats of Illinois.
It’s a good thing this is happening, but a shame that it’s necessary. I think most people would assume, and understandably so, that more than thirty years after the signing of the ADA there would be no more of those closed doors that Bush talked about. Sadly, that’s far from the case.
The press release put out by the Senators about the introduction of the ASAP Act points out that, according to the Federal Transit Administration, as of 2019 nearly 20 percent of all transit stations were not ADA accessible.
“We’ve come a long way since the ink dried on the ADA more than thirty years ago,” Duckworth was quoted as saying. “But we still have a long way to go to make this country truly accessible, including making sure that every American can use our nation’s public transportation systems.”
Duckworth said it was “imperative that transit systems continue to make accessibility a priority.”
Here in Chicago, the Damen Avenue station on the Blue Line received a $13 million renovation in 2014. But no elevator was installed, so the station remains as inaccessible to people who use wheelchairs or otherwise can’t scale stairs as it was when it was constructed in 1894.
The Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) has engaged in other multimillion-dollar renovation projects of stations that remain inaccessible. This brazenly violates the spirit of the ADA but it doesn’t technically violate the letter of the law.
Here’s how it works: The ADA doesn’t require renovation projects to include accessibility upgrades unless the price tag is above a certain amount. So the CTA has cleverly dodged the ADA by making sure spending on a certain station comes in under the threshold that triggers access obligations. Pretty cute, eh?
In New York City, disability activists sued the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) in 2016 for significantly renovating stations without adding elevators. A federal judge ruled in 2019 that MTA was indeed in violation of the ADA. Only about a quarter of that subway system’s 472 stations had elevators at the time.
The moral of the story is equity is not achieved by decree; it must be built. But exclusionary infrastructure also must be dismantled—it doesn’t just disappear the moment a civil rights law is signed.
When people don’t avail themselves of opportunities to bring about positive change, this is what happens. Decades go by and some people remain as excluded as ever. And yet more legislation is needed.